


for never-resting time leads summer on

by aosc



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Assassin's Creed: Unity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 01:16:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3155390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arno reclines in his seat, half shrugging, one shoulder tipping carelessly. His mouth slants in amusement still. “Well, if you’d rather not know – I’ve many more people I can ask.”</p><p>“Ask? To what? Am I escorting you to a ball?” </p><p>For all that Napoleon knows of Arno, this may well be an actually plausible guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for never-resting time leads summer on

**Author's Note:**

> revised and rewritten as of may 2017, so i figured i might owe to it to repost it. or, sort of repost it, at least. title from shakespeare's sonnet v.

* * *

 

The atmosphere in the café is ruddy; wet rain and mud dragged through the doors with each man passing, tiny pools forming in the odd cavity in the floor by the entrance. The lighting is partly broken. A bulb shines naked over the bar, another hangs off of a curled barb in each corner, whilst two overhead remain shattered. Napoleon had watched it occur on the night before, in the center for revolutionary plot, and the light for the proverbial moths looking for trouble, and to throw a fist, too.

 

 _Inevitable_ , he supposes, and lets his glass of wine off on the tabletop, crowding the slip of paper lying there. It’s plain, neatly scripted, crumpled from where he’s worn it tucked in the breast pocket of his coat. _Café du Marais, 3:00_ , it reads, in a scribbly, unsteady hand. It is unsigned, but Napoleon knows well whom he will be seeing.

 

It isn’t a social club that he is usually an attendee of. Its interior is foreign, though its layout is alike that of most other cafés that Arno enjoys carting him off to, whenever they both happen to enjoy the odd evening off. The bar top is fashioned in heavy marble, and during evenings, it is stained with ale and wine. The people who mill about is a curious blend of masked and unmasked, of sans-culottes and those with plumes on their hats, with heavy medallions marking their outstanding military service chiming gently on their breasts – proper men of honor.

 

There are the women, who he suspects will up and vanish in twilight, to attend a soirée he might accompany Désirée to. The women who dress in common linen dresses, with scarves obscuring their hair, who will go home, to feed children barely covering up their ribs.

 

Loitering in the shadows are prostitutes, with sultry eyes, inviting hips, male and female. They are divided in class, but united in _this_. Each and every one of them carry their cockade, proudly starch against their individual, and they cheer and laugh and they plot. It is a France that bursts at the seams with its liveliness, and it fascinates Napoleon with its rapture, both in life, and in death.

 

From a corner a drunken man spills half of his ale. He sits at the very corner of his chair, slumping onto himself.

 

Napoleon watches him straighten slowly. He puts his glass to the floor, and raises his palms before him. He’s surprised to see, that once he does, it is to induce a clapping rhythm that is surprisingly somber. Surprisingly _sober_.

 

It grows, as the premise quietens. The crowd is anticipating a turn of verse, waiting for the odd man to take tone.

 

“Allons enfants de la Patrie,” begins a woman, who’s got a lovely, curling voice, “Le jour de gloire est arrivé. Contre nous de la tyrannie, l’étendard sanglant est levé, l’étendard sanglant est levé...”

 

 _Le Marseillaise_ rings, clear, loud, tolling like bells. Not for the first time, Napoleon feels its pull. He is happy to sing along, though he sometimes stumbles, twisting his tongue about _Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras, égorger vos fils_.

 

The song fills, elevates, eggs, and by the time there is a dark shadow splaying across the table opposite him, the figure of a man in the chair on the other side of the table, he is lost to the song’s rhythm and cadence. To its rebellious, revolutionary streak. It fills his lungs, wets his tongue, steals his attention.

 

As such, it takes him much longer than usual to notice that he is no longer alone. He startles in the midst of the final verse, lungs full to the point of bursting with song, as he finds Arno slouching into the chair. The assassin’s right eyebrow is raised in good humor, the bow of his mouth also moving along with the lyrics, albeit his voice is low, too low to be heard over the crowd.

 

Napoleon imagines his voice, thick and sat low in his throat, rough, and finds that it pleasantly trills down his spine.

 

“So,” says Arno, as the final verse fades, “ _Vive la Révolution_.”

 

“A fine establishment,” says Napoleon, and swirls his merlot, swaying the glass.

 

Arno smiles, “Why, thank you.”

 

Napoleon laughs in surprise, much louder than he means to. “You’re actually serious.”

 

“The most inconspicuous man you know, why is this a surprise?” Arno’s smile broadens, arching into a grin. “There are many things you have left to discover about me.”

 

“Ah, I see,” Napoleon quirks an eyebrow, “Far too many to broach over one single glass of wine on an afternoon like this one, I will guess.”

 

“Far too many,” Arno agrees. He stretches, as though he is at his most languid here, in the midst of a crowd, in a crowd unable to be predicted, to be anticipated – that could do anything. In the midst, where anything could happen. ”But, mon ami, that isn’t what I wished to discuss, bringing you here.”

 

“No? So much for the pretense,” Napoleon says, and lips at his glass, staining it with breath. “Very well, I will have to apply my curiosity to something – or someone, else.”

 

Arno reclines in his seat, half shrugging, one shoulder tipping carelessly. His mouth slants in amusement still. “Well, if you’d rather not know – I’ve many more people I can ask.”

 

“To ask? Am I escorting you to a ball?”

 

For all that Napoleon knows of Arno, this may well be an actually plausible guess.

 

Arno chuckles. “Imagine the headlines, should that occur.”

 

Napoleon mutters, “I would rather not,” but dismisses the gentle mockery. “Well, what is it then, that you so wish to ask of me?”

 

Arno’s dark eyes contemplate, scrutinize, as though weighing on scales whether to abandon his original inquiry. “I could go about this alone,” he says, slowly, “But it would be of great – help, should I happen to be formally invited to the Hôtel Lambert for tonight’s salon.” 

 

The Hôtel Lambert is in a few hours housing a salon, continuing in the vein of which Louise Dupin and Émilie de Breteuil had previously established it, a few decades earlier. It is a popular gathering for Enlightenment figures, though not anymore exclusively female, and not unlike the café du Marais, which they are currently in, it houses now those who plot the revolution’s further stages, those who will benefit from the uprooting of ideologies and class comfort. Napoleon frowns. “I cannot name a person on that guest list who deserves the gallows on the name of the revolutionary.”

 

For everything he would, or would not, know of what Arno does, he does realize that it is not the Third Estate that is the subject – or target, of his assassinations. It is the First. Royalists and adverse politicians, sympathizers with the Ancien Régime and its hereditary rulers. There is no love lost on either for Napoleon’s sake, but appearance is everything. He cannot endanger a public persona if he does not gain from it, regardless of personal wanton.

 

Arno’s expression changes, warps into something distant, something that is far off. “If it were that simple,” he replies.

 

Napoleon realizes, with an unhappy startle, that this is where the drapes for the stage fall, obscuring the actors in the face of an act ending. The things which you do not get to see, to maintain the pretense of them never at all occurring.

 

The backstage set is bustling; the space in which stage makeup is reset, in which lines, and codas, are rehearsed. In which the actors, dancers, laities, relax into the personas they do not embody on stage. And not one of these things are made available to the public viewing – to them, on the viewer’s side of the stage, they simply do not exist. And neither does this.

 

Napoleon is not naïve enough to not realize that the machinery behind the revolution hides other, more unpleasant, layers in its folds, but neither are they especially familiar to him.

 

“Very well,” Napoleon says, conceding to what is partly his curiosity, but mainly a desire to remain close to the center stage of things, quite regardless of what horrors they may bring. “As a military acquaintance.”

 

Open surprise unfolds on Arno’s face, before it melts slowly into a pleasant grin knife sharp, prone to cutting.

 

“Don’t worry,” the assassin says, and eases to his feet. He does not walk away before he leans in, across the table, to a pleasant curl in Napoleon’s stomach, and murmurs by the shell of his ear; “I know how to play dress up, _Capitaine_.”

 

*

 

Napoleon staves off entering the premise despite that he has already called in the favor putting Arno, under the pretense of a false identity, high on the guest list and in need of no escort such as himself.

 

Evening twilight is dawning over Paris’ uneven rooftops, its light like mottled bruising shimmering in the snaking of the Seine, and the fading warmth of late August still hangs like a pretty shroud of pink grape and washed out blood low in the sky, having replaced the earlier, brief showering of rain.

 

People mill calmly along the tip of the far street, only to disappear off the farther Pont Marie in shadows, or veer towards the bustle of the Rue Saint-Louis l’Île. Here, Napoleon thinks, there will be blood shed tonight. In one way, or another, he has inadvertently stamped someone’s blood, unwillingly given, onto a contract of agreement with the _diavolo_. He breathes, deeply, the incense-like air heavy from the river still and heady, would have gotten to his head were it not for his lengthy previous exposure to it.

 

He almost expects Arno to slide from the cobbled roof of a nearby building, jumping off the side of a linen-covered stand with the grace of a tight rope walker; a showy introduction where there should be none.

 

Of course, for one to be able to move so inherently silently in plain sight, to know, instinctively, how to blend, how to avert one’s gaze from your figure, Napoleon suspects that the assassin is not overly fond of a grand entré, despite notions.

 

As it is, Arno arrives to the scene as inconspicuously as is possible.

 

Napoleon happens upon his figure purely by accident – searching the crowd with no culprit in particular in mind. Had he not taken particular previous interest in the way Arno moves, the loitering swagger to his hips, the quick glide to his step, his squared shoulders and easily arched neck, then he isn’t so sure he would have noticed him. Not when he aims not for Napoleon, who is shrouded by the dipping branches of a white willow in the fork of the road, but for the farther off shore walk. Arno is dressed in royal blues, with glinting silver stitching rather than those in military red and gold. The buttons on his coat chime equally cold. The broadsword he usually carries on him has been thoughtfully exchanged, as has his firearm.

 

Napoleon waits a heartbeat, two, for Arno to pass, before he distinguishes himself from shadow, and follows quietly. A thought works the walls of his mind, and he wonders, briefly, whether the contact who doubtlessly supplied the assassin with his newfound army-supplied weapons is to be found within the royal guard, or put to an unnamed grave on the outskirts of the Palais Royal.

 

The Hôtel Lambert is a tasteful building, very contemporary, and from its entré emerges a murmur of voices, even from afar. A lone guard is posted at its ornate gate.

 

Napoleon does not attempt to catch up to Arno, who seems oblivious to his presence, a few feet trailing ahead.

 

“Invitation,” he hears the guard ask, a note wary of someone he does not know by face.

 

“Oh, apologies, I’ve lost my invitation. I’m Colonel Victor Dorian,” he says, “I should be on your list, regardless.”

 

Napoleon admires greatly the ease with which Arno plays a part – the unassuming bystander. The charming nobleman. The commanding officer, who knows very well his place as one above the guard.

 

The guard seems slightly taken aback. He skims his first page. Arno isn’t on there. The guard looks up again, but only to find a face that seems to mirror a desire to be allowed through, cease this nonsense. The guard wets his thumb and folds the first page over his board. On the second page, he does find one Col. Victor Dorian. He looks up at Arno again, before he taps its script, nodding uncertainly. “Well. Here you are. Welcome, Sir.”

 

He inclines his head towards the entrance across the short courtyard. Napoleon sees, from his slanted corner view, half of Arno’s faux polite smile.

 

Unlike the patron he’d just allowed inside, the guard recognizes Napoleon instantly upon him approaching. He’d waited until Arno was well across the courtyard before walking ahead.

 

“Monsieur Bonaparte,” greets the guard, with obvious respect.

 

“Corporal,” says Napoleon. He nods, familiar with his face. “All is well, I hope?”

 

“I – Indeed, thank you, Sir. Hope you’ll have a pleasant evening.” He gives no further thought to his list, merely points Napoleon towards the gates.

 

“Thank you, Corporal, I wish the same to you,” replies Napoleon, and walks past.

 

Nobody is outside, so he continues across the courtyard, to where the doors are open, but only just, a sliver of dull light making it obvious that it’s tipped askew. Napoleon hurriedly makes his final way; the hôtel’s situate just by the Seine makes it vastly preferable to remain indoors, lest you be subjected to the often pungent smell of the river.

 

The vestibule is dark, and surprisingly crowded for the relatively early hour.

 

Soft candlelight reflects in the low slung chandeliers, patterns the paintings in gold frames, illuminates the stucco high on the walls. It shadows the hollow of the cheek beneath the bone on the women slipping past him, their perfume haunting, their shoulders bared and lips painted. He gives them no further thought, much as he suspects they do not give him.

 

Napoleon sees many acquaintances pass him by, but none of them is the single one he targets. Arno has slipped successfully away. _The irony_ , Napoleon thinks wryly, _as the shadow, to be left behind, confounded_.

 

He greets a Colonel Courtenay with as best of a flourishing handshake as he can muster. Vowels still do not agree with him, at times, but the more they speak, the man seems to become oddly agreeable. He merely smiles at Napoleon’s fumbling French, respectfully echoing the sentiments of a fellow military man. They exchange phrases of politeness, Napoleon asks what of his wife and two children, Courtenay ask him however he’s done to rise within the ranks so quickly. They also touch briefly upon the subject of calculating shooting trajectories, which sets Napoleon at ease; technicalities come to him much quicker than high French does.

 

“Citizen Bonaparte, you have an exemplary mind,” Courtenay says, an impressed eyebrow elevated upon his face.

 

Napoleon smiles, ”It’s in the mathematics, Sir. It is not terribly difficult, simply repetitive.”

 

The colonel inclines his head. “I’m sure, but to know these mathematics so intimately, that is a gift in and of itself.”

 

“Is it not, Citizen Courtenay? I’ve sung his praises since he came through the École Militaire. Glad to find that someone seems to agree with my judgment.”

 

Napoleon has known the assassin for scarcely a year, but his sudden appearance, out of the blend of the crowd, does not surprise him so much anymore that it is noticeable. He quietly thanks one deity or another for that.

 

Napoleon acknowledges him to Courtenay, who has turned halfway to greet Arno. “Indeed, Citizen – forgive me, I do not believe that we have made prior acquaintance?”

 

Arno smiles politely, extending a gloved hand, “A mistake that shall at once be rectified. Victor Dorian. ”

 

Courtenay seems to think for a moment, his hand furled and suspended in mid-air, his eyes skimming Arno’s face as someone who seems to recognize a name, but cannot place its face. He slowly shakes the presented hand. “A pleasure,” the colonel says, halting, as if he wishes to say something else, but hinders himself. Arno does not elaborate on the gaucherie, instead choosing to turn to Napoleon. “Captain,” he says, a pleasant murmur, “May I steal your company for just a moment? I wish to hear your opinion on the state of – certain affairs.”

 

The man Courtenay smiles widely at once, as though the slightly awkwardness of Arno’s entrance is of little consequence now. “Opinion is what allows these salons to thrive, I’ll not deprive you of the chance to discuss it. Good evening to you, fellow citizens.”

 

“The same to you, Colonel.” Arno tips a figurative hat, smiling broadly all the while.

 

Napoleon feels the slip of the assassin’s fingers through the crook of his elbow, discreetly. He follows amicably enough when he chooses to make for the mouth of the hallway, away from Courtenay and the entourage he has attracted by being made lonesome.

 

“Good grief,” Arno mutters, and blows for a strand of hair caught tangled in his eyelashes. “Perhaps I should’ve stolen the guest list, first. This establishment positively crawls with military. I’d have much preferred an intimate salonnière to this.”

 

Napoleon snorts softly, “Trust me, my friend; the military is much preferable to a female-only gathering. A woman will sooner rip you to shreds for naught but intent, than a commander of infantry will question your motifs for murder.”

 

Arno chuckles silently, the tail end of something rough, something sultry, in the dim lightning. It catches in Napoleon’s stomach.

 

They continue, twisting around the corner to where the crowd thins, towards the staircase, rather than towards the Galerie d’Hercule. Napoleon feels the grip on his arm, already loose, lessen. Eventually, Arno’s palm leaves naught but heat behind, as it slips from its place. The assassin stops, just before the initial step of the ascending staircase. “We part here, for now,” he says.

 

The drapes close, the lacing tied back. Napoleon nods, “As you say.”

 

Because well here, he is not in a position to question Arno’s motifs and intents, nor his orders. He is not to become the accomplice. He knows that it is the only option that makes sense, both morally and sensibly. That he, beneath the stairs, shrugs off any responsibility he may have shouldered by aiding Arno in getting inside. It still chafes on him, like an ill-fitting suit. Morally questionable or not, Napoleon does not thrive so much on anything, as being center stage and close to the events themselves.

 

*

 

Napoleon is becoming more used than he’d ever thought possible, to spotting blood on even the most discreet articles of clothing.

 

Arno emerges from west, into the length of the galerie, not half an hour later. Napoleon is on the cusp of a small gathering discussing the monetary benefits and disadvantages of the current political climate, not contributing to the debaet itself, when he sights the assassin again. Arno hides one sleeve behind his back, but his stance looks relaxed to any eye, and even to the trained, he does not appear particularly distressed.

 

Napoleon wonders what it does to you – the profession of killing. One might say that the basic sentiments of their respective professions mingle, but Napoleon would disagree.

 

An assassination is intimate, as he understands it. Being in the military isn’t being employed to kill – it is a line of defense, first. A necessity, quite regardless of sentiment, of opinion. Napoleon has taken lives in the line of duty, by his king, and in the name of Corsica, his country. Ultimately, he is detached from whom he points his pistol at. There is nothing personal about it. He acknowledges, of course, that the realization of taking a life, a pumping heart, a full set of able lungs, is difficult to grasp, regardless of intent. But he did not know any of those men, and neither will he ever, from his vantage point; a man lost in the vastness of the French Army.

 

He imagines knowing them. He imagines scouring their living quarters, shadowing them through Les Halles, ducking into a crowd on their way to church to avoid being spotted. He imagines memorizing the guard post changes for when to slip through a window at night, and remaining in the shadows until his target is ever unsuspecting. Of triggering the wrist blade, his features obscured beneath the folds of a dark, nondescript hood.

 

Napoleon has seen the surgically precise slash across a throat, the instantaneous whip crack of a broken beck, severed at the spine. He recalls Arno’s quick fingertips intimate on his inner thigh, pressuring a point there, just where the major artery flutters past in waves and squalls of blood. Of the point high in his armpit, the almost translucent visibility of the skin there. How the limbs can be smartly paralyzed via points the assassin has long since memorized, his eyes shut, fingers still pressing exactly to where a bundle of nerves lay on Napoleon’s arms, legs, down the nooks and joints, the tendons in his body.

 

Arno looks at him then, and smiles slightly, as though he follows Napoleon’s exact train of thought from where he is crossing the room.

 

He distinguishes himself from the crowd, and joins Arno without the assassin pausing to meet him. They cross the room at a leisurely pace, by the utmost wall. Arno’s eyes wander, and Napoleon knows – the Galerie d’Hercules is stunning. Vaults of baroque paintings, grandiose, arching skyward. The light from the windows is scarce, and so from the candles the shadows of the portraits deepen, the colors become shaded darker, deeper, than they would be during the high hours of midday.

 

“Is it done?” asks Napoleon. He looks ahead, rather than averting his gaze.

 

“It is.” Arno sounds unfazed. He keeps Napoleon’s tempo without cease, without pause. He continues, “I’m due for a report now, unfortunately. I cannot stay.”

 

Napoleon does not cease, either. Though, he takes little care to mask his disappointment. “Ah. Alone, I presume?”

 

He catches the assassin’s eye just as they step into the now relatively empty vestibule. Arno’s smile is a line of amused lips and a row of very white teeth. “Well,” says Arno, loftily, “I’ve a rather grand collection of literature in my quarters. Touching the subject pertaining to what we were just discussing.”

 

“… Of course – regarding the subject, obviously,” Napoleon agrees amicably, murmuring. He maintains his expression, careful not to slip to Arno’s level of unmasked mirth. He still feels the thrill of Arno, slick and unadulterated, down his back, as if it were a tangible touch beginning between his shoulder blades.

 

The assassin inclines his head. Napoleon doesn’t refuse. Cannot, if you will. It is a power thrill, walking so close to death itself. It is fascinating as an idea, flipping a coin, fingering the mechanic strapped to Arno’s wrist – death, in an instant, within the breadth of a second, barely as long as it takes Napoleon to breathe in a mouthful of oxygen.

 

No, when he thinks about it, he certainly wouldn’t be able to resist the unprompted glimpse into the stage where it is at its darkest, deep behind the thick stage curtains.

 

The evening is still warm. Arno steers them gently towards the main street outside the hôtel, where the noise of a distant crowd buzzes, and thickets of people move in ribbons along Saint-Louis en l’Île.

 

Napoleon walks just a step behind Arno, at his shoulder so that they are firmly in company, yet enough of a beat late so that he may know when to turn without looking too foreign, too out of touch with his companion. The streets are familiar to him, he’s walked them many, many times – with Arno, even. But he does not know where, exactly, they are headed this time.

 

“Tell me,” says Arno, after a few minutes of contemplative, easy silence, “Was Voltaire right?”

 

It takes Napoleon a moment to realize to what Arno is referring. The Lambert was, after all, home to Voltaire’s salons for a short while.

 

Napoleon hums, noncommittal. “He remains an Enlightenment great, though all great men are flawed, are they not?”

 

Arno turns an abrupt right, onto Rue Poulletier, where the maisons crowd, tip into each other, and where the crowd ceases, fading out of the street. “Very diplomatic, _Capitaine_ ,” he concedes.

 

They do not speak further until they’ve walked along the Seine a fair bit, diverting onto Quai de Bourbon, where they watch the sky shift into deep blues, and where the skyline of the city blurs dark and lines into a mere silhouette of what it truly is.

 

“However right or wrong any great philosopher were regarding the revolutionary state, there is still the matter of orchestrating it. People die for their _ideas_.”

 

Arno sounds calm, unperturbed, but Napoleon notices his squared shoulders, and the sharp breath he keeps down in his lungs for too long, before he releases it. He thinks that he knows that whatever it is that being contracted to assassinate people for a living does to you, it does not remove you from the scene. It does not ease the realization of death as a tool to further an idea, no matter how justified you may think it to be.

 

“A revolution is an uprooting of a pre-existing state of rule,” replies Napoleon. They pass the gaping black slither of the street that crosses into Quai d’Orléans on the other side of the island. Arno seems sunk deep in his own, private thoughts. When Napoleon glances towards him, he appears non-hearing, a frown in his brow that makes it drawn and pensive. “No matter your opinion on the state, it is based on its current ruler’s beliefs,” he continues, “It is man made, and it will never cease to be. Even anarchy, a society rid of parliament, of order – of this monarchy, will be maintained based on a specific set of beliefs. People will continue to die for simply an idea, no?”

 

Arno tips his head, but seems neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “If it is indeed so, what belief do you concede to?”

 

“That the king is a weak man, that religion is a powerful tool, and that every man should be equal before the law,” Napoleon replies swiftly. Of this, he is absolutely sure. On this, he does not waver.

 

They round the tip of Saint-Louis, coming out towards where the weak image of Île de la Cité flicker and waver and shimmer in the squalls of the river, now distant in the dark.

 

Napoleon turns, and immediately recognizes the front of Café Théâtre. He almost laughs. It doesn’t surprise him, to see Arno motion towards the establishment.

 

The assassin looks at first confused to discover the origins of Napoleon’s mirth, before he seems to catch on to his train of thought. He smiles. “I wasn’t lying, when I said there were many things left to discover about me,” he says.

 

“Indeed, you did,” replies Napoleon. Something stocks in his throat. “The first of many things, I assume.”

 

Arno waggles an eyebrow. “In due time, my friend,” he says, “I’m already late,” and, in what is by far the least inconspicuous move he has made since they met earlier in the afternoon, he vaults over the side of the sidewalk, pitching down towards the riverbank.

 

Napoleon chuckles aloud this time, seeing the shocked astonishment of the crowd quickly gathering to where Arno had disappeared over the ledge.

 

He climbs the few steps preluding the building, and enters the café. It’s jostling, bursting with song and shouting, with ale and wine and the ready made headiness of the revolutionary spirit, such as all of these locations seem to do. Napoleon has committed its layout to memory already, so he takes a direct right, opting out of the main frame. He comes into a long hallway, lined with portraits, which leads him in towards a room with a tall staircase. The circular room is empty, only the continuing portraits, which line also these walls, there to accompany him.

 

Napoleon climbs the steps slowly, savoring it, as though he is entering a sacred crypt brimming with secrets for the very first time. Upstairs are several doors ajar, all seemingly empty, gaping darkly with stories untold.

 

He walks slowly about the large space, sliding his fingers down the ornament tree of the handrail he follows. The house whispers with the crowd gathered downstairs, but also seemingly up here, where he can see no one, where nothing moves tangible before his eyes. It is a peculiar feeling that burrows more in his sensory part of the brain, rather than his coldly rational.

 

Napoleon isn’t, per se, a believer of the innately supernatural, a harsh critic of ghost stories – but he does not shy away from the belief either, and if there is such a thing as spirits of the deceased who still choose to linger among the living, who have passed from ancient times to this present, he believes that yes, this is an establishment they would opt to remain in. He feels it in his flesh and in his bones, dust in his lungs, as he chooses the room which is sealed off, the door shut. It speaks of privacy that the other doors do not.

 

“This line of work certainly seems to pay well,” he murmurs, to himself, stepping across the threshold and through the door, finding a subtle switch to his right upon the wall.

 

Alit by a few sparse light bulbs that line the walls, Arno’s room – which it must be, is sparsely, but expensively decorated. It makes him wonder, briefly, why it is that for all that they have met over the past year, this is the first time that the assassin has confirmed to Napoleon that he lives anywhere permanently. He had pictured a wanderer, at first. Never settling, constantly in motion between establishments, and hands, from job contract to job contract.

 

But it had soon struck him with the wrong chord, discordant and off kilter. Arno isn’t a mercenary, and his permanent state of business within Paris had led Napoleon to the conclusion that he must indeed house within the city’s borders.

 

The room features a mahogany bed frame, on which is elevated a thick mattress, and obscured partially by folding drapes. The floor is covered in Persian rugs, and velvet armchairs litter the expanse of the room, placed in every corner. Napoleon becomes suddenly self conscious, aware of the incredibly high rent on his Halles apartment, and of his well below satisfactory paycheck. Arno is, a conclusion drawn from many factors, quite obviously descended from Parisian nobility, but what’s extraordinary about that is that Napoleon has never seen him utilize it, never seen him mingle with the noble Parisian crowd, never seen him frequent the places they frequent. He has never seen him in clothes other than Spartan wear or his assassin robes. Never has he been seen to the Opera, or to expensive dinner salons.

 

The man makes for more questions and fewer answers, certainly. Napoleon steps in across the threshold properly, but leaves the door slightly ajar, a sliver of light and a shower of noise filtering through.

 

He wanders the room along its far walls. Sees the ornate letter opener and discarded folds of parchment lying askew on a small table by an arching window. A half visible letter is turned upwards on a slope of ripped envelopes, its script neat and tidy, thin and orderly; a woman’s hand, no doubt, is looking up at Napoleon from an unusually long dictation.

 

He leaves it be, and walks over to the bookshelves, integrated into the wall, messy but seemingly organized in its state of disorganize. He finds Greek prose, and Greek tragedies, plays shelved to the high left, prose to the low left; handwritten, calfskin bound journals stacked on top of one other on the desk. Philosophy and disquisitions, theology and alchemy and elaborate weapons manuals, along with dictations of, what Napoleon can see, history from the entire world, shelved to the right. He reads the cracked spines of each book slowly, losing himself in letters of the alphabet he recognizes, and marveling over how many rare books there must be here. Latin, Roman numerals, Arabic, Hebrew – _everything_ , and more than so, he thinks. Where once Arno seemed taught, well versed enough to be able to partake in any and all conversation, he suddenly seems – scholarly.

 

“Find anything suitable to your tastes?”

 

Suddenly, Arno is there, a solid wall of warmth, just behind Napoleon. He breathes in sharply, refuses to jump in surprise. He twists around, one hand still clutching at a tapered copy of Homer’s Iliad. Arno is there, smiling.

 

“This is not an inheritance,” Napoleon says, rhetorical.

 

Arno hums, neither here nor there. “It’s hardly all my own work,” he says. “It’s – not quite home. But it is a set of walls and a roof under which I ever so often sleep at night.”

 

“Now, I was thinking of the books, but that also leaves me wondering about the house.”

 

“Eh, it has not always looked like this,” says Arno, and shrugs, “Mostly, I let Louise furnish as she pleases. Velvet’s – a bit stuffy for my tastes. But it looks rather nice in here, I’ll confess.”

 

“Spoken like a true politician,” quips Napoleon, “Or like a member of the Estate which he spends most of his days uprooting.”

 

Arno tilts his head, slowly, to regard him. He says nothing.

 

Napoleon feels that they have come to a fork in the road, right here, which he will not approach. He has noted names scribbled on journals, and on stray sheets of paper. But he backs cautiously away, from what they might imply. Right here, and right now, they are neither his place nor his priority. He slowly lets the Iliad down onto the cluttered desk.

 

Something ghosts across the cuts of the plains of Arno’s face. His left hand comes up to rest on Napoleon’s forearm, lightly rubbing a patch in the skin there. His eyes are dark, perpetually, but moreso in the ruddy light of the room. Napoleon’s breath stutters, as it always does, his inability to shield himself from the cause and the effect of Arno Dorian right here.

 

“The report – ?” He asks, to latch onto the pretense of caring about anything but the very scene unfolding before him. It does not pass the assassin unnoticed. Arno moves closer, the tips of his boots touching Napoleon’s, cutting into his space cleanly. He is a tad taller, and he breathes quietly just by Napoleon’s upper lip, warm and a little bit wet. “Unnecessarily drawn out and detailed,” Arno murmurs in reply.

 

Napoleon looks down, searching for the darkened, dried patch of fabric on Arno’s left sleeve. It is black against the blue, looking worn with bruise. “But perhaps justly so?”

 

Arno’s fingers slide upwards from their spot on Napoleon’s forearm, leaving a trail of rumpled fabric and silence in their wake. He appears contemplating, as though he were best to maintain his silence, rather than enter into the direction of the conversation he wants to steer in. “I would have thought you preferably kept the company of Jacobins,” he says, scrutinizing Napoleon.

 

He replies with silence, and Arno carefully slips his hand into the tips of Napoleon’s hair, curling long down the back of his neck. “I believe that for the many who have seen their husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, be led to the gallows for naught, my actions are entirely justified.”

 

Napoleon isn’t questioning it, per se. He sees the necessity, and the twisted sense justice, in it. It feels odd, entering into a greyish area of the morally opaque who dare question assassins for hire in the midst of a political upheaving he believes in himself, so he only nods. He sees the notions of a man believing _himself_ to be the only bearer of truth, beneath what Arno is saying, the personal reason beneath the public cry for justice.

 

He moves into Arno’s space, to put two fingers to skitter over the gauntlet strapped to Arno’s wrist. The assassin remains motionless, save for his blunt nails, which have moved to scrape lightly down Napoleon’s collar.

 

“It’s very personal,” Napoleon says, and carefully, carefully, tucks the sleeve hiding the wrist blade up to fold above it, “You make it personal.”

 

Arno’s breath temporarily stays. Napoleon meets his gaze. He counts, methodically: one, two, three. To the tune of Arno’s heartbeat, slow and steady despite all, beneath the layers he wears.

 

Outside, the night becomes inky dark, and the crowd grows restless along with it. It erupts in bouts of frantic noise, cheers and veers and boos, which all continually filter through the half hinged balcony door.

 

“It is always personal,” Arno replies, almost on the verge of whispering. He leans forward, almost traipsing, into Napoleon’s personal space, and kisses him.

 

Napoleon doesn’t drop from the attention he gives the gauntlet, touch committing to memory the leather’s feel, and the ridges where it hides its tiny machinery. Arno’s teeth are suddenly, almost painfully hard on his bottom lip. Napoleon shivers, and licks into his mouth. Arousal prods in his stomach, insistent at the twist of Arno’s fingers in his hair, and Arno’s whispers of nonsense into his mouth. But in truth, it is also this – the straddle between an encounter with a bringer of death, and with Arno Dorian, with the fade of scar across his nose, and a perpetually loose gait. Between feeling his way to the straps on the turned away gauntlet, and where Arno puts a hand in the fan of Napoleon’s shoulder blades and pushes them flush together. Where he tangles loose an arm arm to push the blade to Napoleon’s hip, digging gently into the sliver of skin exposed between his trousers and his waistcoat, and the tilt of Arno’s head, his warm, amused gaze.

 

It makes Napoleon’s eyes widen, makes him almost smile, attempting to lose himself in the sensations colliding head on.

 

They push back towards the bed. Arno leads him crisscrossing across the floor, takes care that they not trample over each other. He indicates for his steps, which takes them past the large wardrobe, farther into the depths of the room. Arno never lets Napoleon move from within an inch of himself, clutching at his neck and pulling at the low of his back, licking into his mouth with a slow, tantalizing burn. It slides down Napoleon’s throat, to gather in his chest, his lungs, to fill out his stomach, pleasant and hot.

 

He kicks his boots off, careless now, and briefly pulls back from Arno to fumble with the buttons on the assassin’s shirt instead. The linen is coarse against the light shaking of his own hands. Arno’s laugh is throaty. He pitches his hips forward slightly, rubs his obvious erection against the jut of Napoleon’s hip. He purses his lip, feels his own cock twitch wetly, and manages to undo another three buttons in quick succession.

 

“You’re insistent,” Arno gives him.

 

Napoleon quirks an eyebrow, despite the fact that words more and more fall from his mind, “Tell your tailor that he ought to make better buttons,” he mutters.

 

Arno laughs, exposing the column of his throat, and Napoleon pushes him down onto the bed still clothed then, not giving much of a damn about his still not quite-undone shirt.

 

“Very well then,” says Arno, and pushes at Napoleon’s chest until he is sat straddling Arno’s thighs, “If I so must.”

 

Napoleon sits back slightly, palms himself, smiles thinly, just watching, as Arno undresses just fine by himself. He is quick and efficient, never tantalizing, never a show, a hint of somethin utilitarian in how he does not waste his movements, does not throw away a breath, a single extension of a limb.

 

It is here he comes full circle with Arno, straddling the assassin’s arching hips, loosening the plait he has worn his hair in, and finally, unbuckling the final weapon on his body, pulling the straps to the wrist blade free. Arno allows his arm to pull from it, but leaves it astray on the pillow, not moving to make much room.

 

Napoleon breathes a chuckle, and moves his hips downwards in a lazy crescent. Arno reaches up, his breath quick, and pulls his fingers down Napoleon’s thighs. He rolls up to meet him halfway, twitching, groaning at the impact he makes.

 

A scar flexes white and contrasting over Arno’s abdomen, wavering with his left oblique muscle. A strand of hair catches on his cheek, across the line drawn red below his eye. Napoleon leans down and mouths at the junction in the dip of Arno’s throat, the hollow between his collarbones. He rubs their cocks together intently with a hard few snaps of his hips downwards again, the strain against his trousers now an itch he wants to scratch, an insistence he can’t seem to unravel at the base. He braces himself, bent, into Arno’s ribs, breathes wetly into his chest, and feels the quickening rhythm of the assassin beneath him.

 

Arno’s hair, a dark halo half upon the pillow on the bed, twists as he arches his back to dislodge the brunt of Napoleon’s weight from himself. “Up,” he murmurs.

 

Napoleon complies. Arno makes deft work of his trousers, slides out of the garments without much trouble, despite the freeing of his straining cock, flushed and red, slick and glistening at the tip. Napoleon chews on his bottom lip, and moves hesitantly off the bed, if only temporarily, to rid himself of his own trousers.

 

Arno pulls him down onto himself again, quickly, moving with the grace of one who bides time by climbing house facades and flinging themselves from free hanging banisters. The muscles in the slopes from his neck down into his shoulders work, rope beneath the thin skin. Napoleon’s mouth grows dry with the sight of it, with the sight of him –

 

“You’re a sight to behold, Arno Dorian,” he mutters, whilst he clamps down on a noisy groan, when Arno roils their hips together once more, now with naught but skin between them. His cock leaves sticky trails on the inside of Napoleon’s thigh.

 

“I could say the same,” says Arno, and pulls on Napoleon.

 

He leans in over Arno, tangles one leg – the one which sometimes gives out with the nerves in a state of disarray, at the height of winter, when the gunshot wound is felt the most – with Arno’s, feels the slide of his thigh muscles work against Napoleon’s. Arno’s fingers trail paths down Napoleon’s back, and Napoleon sucks on Arno’s lower lip until he comes away and sees it thicken with blood. Arno has reached between the two of them, and slicks his palm on the precome that drools onto his own stomach. He takes the both of them in hand, works them with an otherworldly flick of his wrist that has Napoleon instantly writhing with the sheer feeling of it. “Gods,” he murmurs, and snaps his hips.

 

Time dissolves into the isolated feeling of Arno’s palm sliding over him, of Arno’s teeth clicking into his own – of the sweat that gathers in the tangle of hair in his neck. He focuses on the fervent rise of Arno’s chest, of how the muscles in his sides work, in how the knife tilt of his jaw is revealed to him, chalked out and regal in the poor light.

 

Napoleon’s thoughts stray, dissolve into nothings and nonsense, as he is sent hurtling towards oblivion when Arno speeds up the movements of his wrist. He moans nonsense into the corner of Arno’s mouth, and Arno kisses him again fervently, groaning once, as he thrusts off the bed, coming in thick ropes that slide wetly down Napoleon’s stomach.

 

Napoleon mumbles reverence into Arno’s mouth, mixing French and Corsican curses freely, clumsily. He feels his body peak, in the moment of it almost painfully, and he tugs on Arno’s shoulder up towards himself when he shudders through the blinding white of orgasm, breathing snapping through his teeth.

 

In the aftermath of it, Napoleon sits crouched on the perch of the bedside, bowing over where he cradles the gauntlet on his knees. He is studying the crossbow-feature that he had not previously (oddly enough) noticed.

 

Arno is dressed in loose trousers and has slung on his unbuttoned white shirt. His hair is swept up in a loose knot that leaves the vulnerable column of his neck stretching into his spine vulnerable. He’s sat leaned into the cushions of the closest arm chair, scribbling on a sheaf of parchment in broad strokes of ink.

 

Napoleon looks up from his studious position every so often, courtesy of sensing Arno’s gaze upon himself. They arrive, almost at once, back at the crossroads, which Napoleon had so deftly stepped past, then.

 

“There are a number of things about you that I would like to inquire about,” admits Napoleon. He rolls the syllables slowly between his teeth, allow for them to become realized.

 

“Mm,” says Arno, consenting to talking whilst still maintaining his scripting the letter befor ehim, “Isn’t the most elusive question answered, now? The insatiable curiosity sated?”

 

“What would that be, then?”

 

The assassin looks up, hand pausing. He lays the quill down on the parchment. He gestures around the room. “Know thy enemy, know his homestead. And do you not, now?”

 

There is a quirk to Arno’s brow and a slope to his mouth, which prompts for Napoleon to return the sentiment. He inclines his head. “So, you are saying that this puts us on even ground? And also that a man’s home, temporary as it may be, is his best kept secret?”

 

“Yes,” Arno agrees, “I believe it does. And also, that it is. It should be, at any rate. I don’t share the place where I lay down to rest with just any bypasser on the street.”

 

Napoleon presses the trigger on the crossbow, making it release empty, kicking back onto his thigh. He gestures to it. “So this identity of yours, is not the one you would go to your grave with?”

 

Arno looks around the room. Napoleon follows his gaze. The numerous books, the expanses of foreign rugs, the plush materials and the dark chevron parquet. “No,” says the assassin slowly, “It is the secret I will die for, and with. But it’s not the one I cherish. Hence, it isn’t what I consider most treasured.”

 

Napoleon triggers the hidden blade, which springs forth without mercy, cleaving the air, a higher power. A starch contrast to the man before him, who is sat, gaze adrift, shoulders loose, in thoughts that do not pertain, in any way, shape or form, to the art of killing that he has devoted himself to. Napoleon thinks that, perhaps, in the crossroad he so steadfastly has avoided, the truth is really rather simple: the man is the revolution. But the man behind the revolution, is often simply a man.

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> i've taken some liberties with the use of the _salon_ here, making it not as intimate as it is often portraid. the hôtel lambert was probably mostly used as a _salonnière_ , but after louise dupin died, i'm not sure who owned it, so tis entirely fictional, this. 
> 
> furthermore, this simultaneously lacks plot, and... has... plot? reading about napoleon, the part which stuck with me was the, true or no, observation/assumption that he adored joséphine, initially at least, because she was something he wasn't. she was noble, and wealthy, and knew everyone, whom adored her equally. he was also inherently fascinated by death, it is said. so. there. that's the plot for those of you who felt, tl;dr this shit.


End file.
